Johnny Cash, American VI: Ain't No Grave (American Recordings) *** (From Richmond and Twickenham Times)

Johnny Cash, American VI: Ain't No Grave (American Recordings) ***

9:00am Friday 5th March 2010 in

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Last Friday would have been Johnny Cash’s 78th birthday, so what better time to review his last gift to our ears.

In the final mopping up of Cash’s extraordinary American Recordings made with producer Rick Rubin from 1994 until the day he died, September 12, 2003, this stands testament to Cash’s enduring skill with a song, a melody and an arrangement. American VI is very much the epilogue to the set – sparse, wintry sounds made more so by Cash’s whiskery husk of a voice, the sound of a man at ease with the coming journey as he makes his final peace.

At the album’s heart is the unheard Cash original, I Corin-thians: 15.55, written over the last three years of his life, but its soul is contained in the tradition of the title and a crackling version of Satisfied Mind.